I was taught that Catholics should never attend non-Catholic weddings. Why then would Catholic bishops attend the royal wedding today in Great Britain?
I don’t know what you read that said that Catholics should never attend non-Catholic weddings. In answers I have given, I have basically said that it depends on the situation and provided these guidelines to help laity discern the course of action in their particular situation.
I believe that, while those guidelines might be helpful for Catholic laity, Catholic clergy and religious must apply stricter standards. They have to be concerned that their presence at any particular non-Catholic wedding could be construed as “official” Church approval for a particular marriage. That is why I believe that Catholic clergy and religious should never attend presumptively-invalid marriages, whether or not a Catholic is one of the partners to the marriage.
In the case of the royal wedding between Prince William of Wales and Catherine Middleton, we have no reason to believe that their marriage is presumptively-invalid. So far as we know, neither have been married before. If both are baptized Christians, then their marriage is not just valid but a Christian sacrament. Given those facts, and given the recent elevation of the public profile of the Catholic Church in England with the establishment of the personal ordinariate for former Anglicans seeking refuge in the Catholic Church, it seems likely that England’s Catholic bishops see great value in promoting friendship between Catholics and Anglicans with the royal family in general and with the second in line to the throne in particular.
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